[chbot] Simple robot programming

[Morris]

I love ladder logic and had been thinking about it!

Ladder logic is functional programming (which will make Paul Davey
happy!).

Ladder logic has an obvious DHTML web interface for it (that said I am
not volunteering to do that because I do Ajax web development for my
job :) but given how common it is I would hope there is something free
out there already. I personally am attempting to avoid requiring
anything installed on a PC, that way web-phones can be used for
development and for remote control, and also so there is no dependency
on having either Windows or Linux installed.

Charles, I am very keen to hear what you find out - especially if it is
web based open-source (Python would be perfect, but PHP, Ruby, Lua, Perl
or Linux CGI apps can all be hosted on the wifi router web server -
probably even DOS apps in DOSBox).

Simon - is that a volunteer I hear! ;)

Cheers

Morris.

On Tue, 2009-06-30 at 10:22 +1200, Simon Knopp wrote:

> That project looks interesting. I agree, ladder logic is a good way to  
> get started with programming simple robots.
> 
> What would really make a tool such as that powerful would be the  
> ability to create functional blocks, either of ladder logic or code. A  
> block of ladder logic would allow higher level commands like in  
> Mindstorms---"turn 90º left" or "move forward for 1 second". A block  
> of code (much like PLCs' structured text) could allow one to write a  
> function in C (for example) and have it represented as a block within  
> the ladder logic environment. These blocks could be created by anyone  
> who knows the language and distributed easily to those that don't.
> 
> I know I'm sort of just describing what PLCs can already do, but to my  
> (relatively uninformed :-) mind it wouldn't be too difficult a feature  
> to implement into a system like that you linked to and would make more  
> powerful programming with ladder logic feasible and accessible to more  
> people.
> 
> Just my two cents worth.
> Simon.
> 
> 
> On 29/06/2009, at 9:55 PM, Charles Manning wrote:
> 
> > Morris and I had a very interesting conversation about simplifying
> > robot programming.
> >
> > Many people are drawn to Mindstorms-like drag and drop programming.
> > This is indeed a simple way to do very simple programming (but is
> > hopeless for anything of reasonable complexity). These tools are also
> > no open source or free.
> >
> > Fortuitously I got into a discussion with Timothy about PLC "ladder
> > logic" programming. This could be a simple way to do very simple
> > programs. There are a few very interesting open source ladder logic
> > projects out there that compile a ladder and generate a "byte code"
> > which runs on a tiny interpreter. These can be simple enough to run on
> > a small AVR, moderate PIC, Linux box etc. Anything that can eat C.
> >
> > Ladder logic is a graphical representation of an electrical circuit
> > that operates on inputs and outputs
> > eg.
> >  |     IN1   IN2  OUT1  |
> > +-----[ ]---[ ]---( )------+
> > |                                |
> >
> > If IN1 is on and IN2 is on then turn on output 1.
> >
> > Better descriptions in http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladder_logic
> >
> > A ladder logic tool I'm going to look at more is at http://www.cq.cx/ladder.pl
> >
> > --Charles
> >
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> 
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